Former Bartow High School linebacker and coach Richard Marsh was hired to be Southeastern University’s first defensive coordinator.

Marsh comes to Southeastern after serving as the head football coach at Thomasville High School in Georgia since 2005 where he led Thomasville to seven Georgia High School Athletic Association playoff appearances and was named the Region Coach of the Year in 2007.

“I am so blessed that the Lord has called me to be part of Coach Barefield’s staff at SEU,” said Marsh. “I feel new and exciting opportunities with kingdom building and competition in championship college football awaits me at Southeastern.”

Marsh’s pedigree and ties to Polk County run deep as he was a three-year letterman at Bartow Senior High School where he played for the late Paul Quinn, who was at the time the winningest football coach in Florida. Marsh was a starting linebacker on Bartow’s 1986 team which won the State Championship.

After high school, Marsh continued his football career at Ferrum College where he played three years under coach Hank Norton, who at the time was the winningest active coach in NCAA III.

After his playing days were over, Marsh returned to Florida to begin his coaching career at Frostproof High School in 1992. Marsh was on staff with the 1992 state championship team as a linebacker coach. After that season, Frostproof Head Coach Farris Brannnen decided to retire and picked Marsh as his successor; a position Marsh held until 1999 when he returned to Bartow.

At BHS he was head football coach and dean of students from until 2003.

Marsh earned a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies from Ferrum College in 1991 and his master’s degree from The University of South Florida-Lakeland in educational leadership in 2004. He and Jennifer have five children.

Barefield and his staff have begun recruiting for Southeastern with plans to begin practice in the fall of 2013 and for the first game to take place in the fall of 2014.